South African Minister of State Security Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba makes it clear that while the Jewish community is under no particular threat, the department of state security takes seriously its mandate to protect the country’s citizens.

Lawyers are preparing criminal and civil charges following one of the darkest weeks of anti-Semitism in South Africa. There have been a slew of vile incidents that sent shock waves through the community.

The SA Friends of the Beit Halochem Zahal Disabled Veterans Organisation was established in Johannesburg in 1982, its primary goal being to help and support Zahal disabled veterans by raising funds to help them return and resume their normal lives as soon as possible.

Dr Ali Bacher, former South African cricket captain and administrator, was one of the five recipients of the 2018 Steve Tshwete Lifetime Achievement Awards at the SA Sport Awards held in Bloemfontein on Sunday night.

Devotion to the cause of the State of Israel flourishes in the most unlikely places, even in societies where the Jewish presence is small to non-existent. Such is the case in Mozambique, where the work of Beth-El Associacao Crista Amigos De Israel - Mozambican Christian Friends of Israel - testifies to how much can be achieved by those inspired by their Christian faith to promote the Israeli cause, despite adverse conditions.

JNF’s unique “Blue Boy Box” now lives at King David Linksfield Pre-Primary so that children of each generation learn the importance of tzedakah (charity or welfare). It is the responsibility of Jews all over the world to build Israel, develop it and nurture it as the home of the Jewish nation

“Knowledge is Light” was our school motto when I was a child in Durban. The importance of education was made clear to us from as far back as I can remember. It wasn’t taken for granted. A good education was a privilege.

Late on Tuesday, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect. While at the time of writing the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had still not confirmed the existence of such a truce, Israeli citizens living in the south of the country were told they could return home and to “normalcy”.

The Israeli gymnastics team was out in full force at 48th FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships that began at Aspire Dome in Doha, Qatar, on Thursday. There are five males and two females in the team headed by new Israeli sensation Artem Dolgopyat. The others are Alexander Shatilov, Ilan Korchak, Andrey Medvedev, and Michael Sorokine, while the women are Ofir Netzer and Meitar Lavy.

As I was heading home on Tuesday, I heard on ChaiFM that 460 rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel since late Sunday. That is an outrageous number. If every one of them hit inhabited areas, thousands of Israelis would have been killed.

“The president is not directly responsible for acts of domestic terrorism, but he should be more careful with his language.” That’s the way the Economist headlined its report on the horrific Pittsburgh killings just more than two weeks ago.

With Prince William’s historic visit to Israel this week, all eyes have been trained on the Jewish capital. It may have taken 70 years, but the first official visit by a member of the British Royal family began in Israel on Monday, when William, the Duke of Cambridge, arrived in Tel Aviv.

Some 5 600 emissaries (shluchim) from Chabad-Lubavitch from all over the world gathered at the Pier 8 warehouse in Brooklyn, New York this week for the opening of their four-day annual international conference and banquet, 75 years after the arrival of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, from Europe.

“The greatness of our nation is that our people are great. We are a nation of heroes, of people with good and decent moral fibre who will not tolerate our country being plundered!” So said Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein in Pretoria this morning.“This is a struggle for accountability and justice,” Goldstein told the crowd (which included prominent Jewish CEOs like Adrian Gore, Stephen Koseff and Michael Katz). “This struggle is about sovereignty. The power of the people always triumphs in the end.”

Sean Spicer has resigned his post as White House Press Secretary, reportedly disappointed with the appointment of New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director. According to some Jewish leaders, he should have quit three months ago.

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BEN SALES | Jul 27, 2017

Over six months as President Donald Trump’s mouthpiece, Spicer managed to get in two separate tiffs with Jewish leaders over the Holocaust, one which sparked calls for his job. For good measure, he also made controversial statements about Jerusalem and the rash of JCC bomb threats.

Here are four times Spicer mixed it up with the Jews, and a bonus from someone who played him on TV.

Spicer and the Holocaust, Episode I: Omission of the Jews

Spicer often had the unenviable task of doubling down on his boss’ more outlandish statements - for example, the visibly incorrect insistence that the inauguration crowd for Trump was larger than Barack Obama’s.

On January 27, Trump’s official statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day omitted any mention of Jews. Jewish groups - even those that supported Trump - slammed the statement. The Trump-friendly Zionist Organisation of America, expressed “chagrin and deep pain” at Trump “omitting any mention of anti-Semitism and the six million Jews”.

But the president’s deputies said the statement was “inclusive” of the Holocaust’s range of victims. Spicer in a media briefing called the critics “pathetic” and accused them of “nitpicking a statement”.

“To suggest that remembering the Holocaust and acknowledging all of the people - Jewish, gypsies, priests, disabled, gays and lesbians - I mean it is pathetic”

Spicer and the Holocaust, Episode II: “Hitler, who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons”

Shortly after Trump ordered an attack on Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack by Bashar Assad, Spicer wanted to accentuate Assad’s evil. So, he compared the Syrian dictator to Hitler - in a way that made Hitler look good.

“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” he said. “We had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

Hitler did, of course, use chemical weapons on civilians, gassing millions of Jews with Zyklon B in concentration camps.

But when a reporter asked Spicer to clarify his words, he angered some critics even more, claiming that Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people”, then saying Nazis killed Jews in “Holocaust centres”.

The Jewish organisational wrath came swiftly. A range of groups criticised the statement.Later that day, Spicer apologised on CNN.

“Frankly, I mistakenly made an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which frankly there is no comparison,” he told host Wolf Blitzer. “And for that I apologise. It was a mistake to do that.”

Spicer says Trump was right about the JCC bomb threats.

A couple of weeks before his second Holocaust gaffe, Spicer enjoyed a rare moment of validation. Following the arrest of an Israeli teen for the rash of bomb threats phoned into Jewish community centres this year, Spicer took an opportunity to note that his boss had been right all along.

Discussing the threats in February, according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Trump told a meeting of states’ attorney generals that “sometimes it’s the reverse” and attacks are made “to make people - or to make others - look bad”.

The comments - if accurate - were a shock to Jews who had faulted Trump for hesitating to condemn the attacks. Two liberal Jewish groups blamed him for fostering a climate conducive to hate.

“We saw these threats coming into Jewish community centres, and there was an immediate jump to criticise folks on the right, and to denounce people on the right and ask them to condemn them, and it turns out that in fact it wasn’t someone on the right,” Spicer said at a media briefing.

Spicer definitely knows where the Western Wall is.

In May, Jewish groups criticised the Trump administration - this time from the right - for not affirming that the Western Wall is part of Israel. National Security Adviser H R McMaster, declined to say so, and a State Department staffer reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office that the site is “not your territory”.

While Israel has annexed eastern Jerusalem, where the wall is located, the international community does not recognise Israel’s claims.

In what may have been an attempt at compromise, Spicer told reporters the site is “clearly in Jerusalem”. But no one was disputing that.

In the end, Spicer did not address the question of sovereignty, adding that the debate over Jerusalem has “had serious consideration” and “will be a topic that’s going to be discussed during the president’s trip between the parties that he meets with”.

The demurrals irked Jews who were hoping for a more hawkish Israel policy from the president

Live from New York, it’s Jewish Easter!

Spicer inspired one of the most talked-about comic creations of the early Trump era: Melissa McCarthy’s imitation of the Press Secretary on multiple episodes of “Saturday Night Live”.

One of those skits may well enter the Jewish canon: Alluding to the mix-up over Hitler and the “Holocaust centres”, McCarthy’s version of Spicer, dressed as the Easter Bunny, uses toy vegetables to explain the story of Passover, or what he/she calls “Jewish Easter”.

The pharaoh is “a bad, bad hombre”, explains “Spicer”, using one of Trump’s catchphrases. “He’s doing some really bad stuff to the Jews. I mean, not even Hitler is -” (he catches himself, saying under his breath, “not going to go there again”).